Lost in the clouds: Naples woman revels in skyward beauty

Cloud enthusiasts say that Southwest Florida have the best. Something about the humidity and the gulf air combine to create beautiful white, cotton-ball cumulus clouds and foreboding, purple-grey nimbus clouds.

Shelby Reynolds/Naples Daily News

When Susan Forrest Castle steps outside, she looks up.

Like in the early morning, when a delicate fog hangs over the streets of her Old Naples neighborhood.

Susan Castle walks the beach, looking at clouds and taking the occasional photograph on Tuesday, ...more

Susan Castle walks the beach, looking at clouds and taking the occasional photograph on Tuesday, May 30, 2017 on Naples beach in Downtown Naples. Castle recently published her book, Clouds of Old Naples, which highlights the different cloud formations that can been seen in the humid atmosphere of southwest Florida.

Katie Klann/Naples Daily News

Or like after the sun sets below the horizon, when all the beach-goers gather up their chairs and head home. Castle would much rather stay to watch the plumes of lavender and gray rise into the sky than the "orange ball."

"I think they just provide a place of escape," she said. "And you can be anywhere, with all this nonsense going on and busyness, and you just look up for a moment, it can really detach yourself from everything that’s going on around you on earth. When you look up there, it can be very peaceful and contemplative."

Clouds sit in the sky above the palm trees on Tuesday, May 30, 2017 on Naples beach in Downtown ...more

Clouds sit in the sky above the palm trees on Tuesday, May 30, 2017 on Naples beach in Downtown Naples. Susan Castle recently published her book, Clouds of Old Naples, which highlights the different cloud formations that can been seen in the humid atmosphere of southwest Florida.

Katie Klann/Naples Daily News

Castle is an amateur cloud enthusiast. She might not know the entire vocabulary for the clouds floating around in our troposphere — the spotty cirrocumulus, the wispy cirrus or the towering cumulonimbus.

But what Castle does know is that she has a growing obsession, and that Southwest Florida's summer humidity has something to do with it.

And she published a photo book last fall filled with 100 of her favorite photos she's snapped along Naples beaches. It's called "Clouds of Old Naples."

Susan Castle walks the beach, looking at clouds and taking the occasional photograph on Tuesday, ...more

Susan Castle walks the beach, looking at clouds and taking the occasional photograph on Tuesday, May 30, 2017 on Naples beach in Downtown Naples. Castle recently published her book, Clouds of Old Naples, which highlights the different cloud formations that can been seen in the humid atmosphere of southwest Florida.

Katie Klann/Naples Daily News

Her obsession for the humid skies of Southwest Florida started when she moved to Naples about 4 years ago for a new job. A creative type and self-proclaimed "hermit," Castle struggled with meeting new people.

So she looked to the clouds.

On her walks to the beach and on her bicycle rides around town, Castle became enchanted by the formations.

"In my time in Naples, somewhere where I didn’t really know that many people, it provided comfort and companionship as strange as that sounds," she said.

Castle has since taken up a new job as director of business development for West Florida for Kravit Estate Appraisals, which is based in Boca Raton. She still writes fiction on the side, and paints. She imagines compiling her next photo book, but maybe this time of palm trees.

"Clouds of Old Naples," her paperback collection of photos, is available at The Paper Merchant and at Invitation to Paper in Naples. Customers can also email Castle at susanfcastle@icloud.com to purchase a copy. They sell for $29.95.

Now, when she does walk on the beach with a friend or drive to dinner with visiting family, Castle can't help but stop and take a photo with her iPhone.

Susan Castle walks the beach, looking at clouds and taking the occasional photograph on Tuesday, ...more

Susan Castle walks the beach, looking at clouds and taking the occasional photograph on Tuesday, May 30, 2017 on Naples beach in Downtown Naples. Castle recently published her book, Clouds of Old Naples, which highlights the different cloud formations that can been seen in the humid atmosphere of southwest Florida.

Katie Klann/Naples Daily News

She's captured cotton-ball cumulus clouds and foreboding cumulonimbus. Even mid-day, when the skies are perfectly blue, the whiteness of the clouds seem even more noticeable, Castle said.

"I think for me they’re one of the most completely imaginative things on earth," she said. "Kind of like the sea, but different.

"I really don’t try to turn clouds into knowable objects. I don’t want to say, 'Oh that looks like a squirrel.' I really just want to be in awe in the cloud in and of itself."